mrnine324
DIY
Hello all, I'm an amateur DIY home-owner that recently moved into an apartment for a 6-month military assignment and these maintenance workers here are clearly incompetent and just do the bare minimum at EVERYTHING, including electrical work.
So I moved in here and my dryer had the 3-prong cord, but the apartment outlet is the 4-prong with that L-shaped neutral, so I go and buy a 4-prong cord at lowes to change on the dryer. Well, I plug it into the outlet and no power to the dryer. Checked circuit breaker, checked my dryer wiring, and then resorted to checking outlet with multimeter. The two HOT's are good with 220ish volts, ground to each hot is proper 120vish, but no power from neutral. So, I take the outlet cover off and discover they wired the white wire from the wall to the ground terminal, and nothing to the neutral terminal. However, I'm not seeing a green or bare metal ground wire coming from the wall. So, I'm not sure what to do here and I certainly don't want to fry my dryer or burn the place down. Could I temporarily install a 3-prong outlet with the white/red/black wires coming from the wall, using white as ground? That sounds bad in my head but it makes me wonder if they wired the white as ground in the circuit panel. Again, this is an apartment so I don't want to get too heavy into fixing their wiring inaccuracies, I just want to be able to use my dryer for the next 6 months and then I'll move back home and restore it to the way it was when I moved into this apartment. Thanks for your help in advance.
So I moved in here and my dryer had the 3-prong cord, but the apartment outlet is the 4-prong with that L-shaped neutral, so I go and buy a 4-prong cord at lowes to change on the dryer. Well, I plug it into the outlet and no power to the dryer. Checked circuit breaker, checked my dryer wiring, and then resorted to checking outlet with multimeter. The two HOT's are good with 220ish volts, ground to each hot is proper 120vish, but no power from neutral. So, I take the outlet cover off and discover they wired the white wire from the wall to the ground terminal, and nothing to the neutral terminal. However, I'm not seeing a green or bare metal ground wire coming from the wall. So, I'm not sure what to do here and I certainly don't want to fry my dryer or burn the place down. Could I temporarily install a 3-prong outlet with the white/red/black wires coming from the wall, using white as ground? That sounds bad in my head but it makes me wonder if they wired the white as ground in the circuit panel. Again, this is an apartment so I don't want to get too heavy into fixing their wiring inaccuracies, I just want to be able to use my dryer for the next 6 months and then I'll move back home and restore it to the way it was when I moved into this apartment. Thanks for your help in advance.
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